The token is primarily intended to serve as a ticket in a transportation system, but could be used in other vending type applications.
In the transportation field, some paper tickets are still used and are often manually dispensed, checked and marked or cancelled. Many tickets are dispensed by machines in return for coins or paper money and are marked or retained after use. Paper tickets are normally used once and result in a large amount of waste.
Recent systems use plastic tickets which can be used up to a hundred times if handled properly. However, collection and sorting is tedious and damaged tickets are usually removed by hand at considerable cost in time and labor.
Some transportation systems use tokens, which have several advantages over plastic and paper tickets. Tokens can be dispensed, handled, collected and sorted by conventional coin handling machines. Metal tokens are very durable and can be used in excess of a thousand times, which greatly reduces the cost of the transaction medium. The primary disadvantage of the tokens in use is their fixed value, which requires the use of one or more tokens for each transaction and necessitates the carrying of numerous tokens for frequent users.